Latest news with #AndyKim
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
What else is on the June 10 NJ primary ballot? Assembly races
While the top of the June 10 primary ballot is often the most discussed, all 80 seats in the New Jersey General Assembly are also up for reelection and there are more candidates in this year's primary than there have been in decades. Antoinette Miles, state director for New Jersey Working Families, said she attributes this year's Assembly races to the end of the county line system. 'We've been in a reform wave in New Jersey buoyed by the candidacy of now Sen. Andy Kim and continues to be buoyed throughout this election and I don't think you get that without the end of the county line,' she said. 'Even if you look back to two years ago, 2023, we saw a number of legislators leave the state Legislature either due to retirement or similar turnover in that effect, yet we know it was only 11% of legislative seats actually contested.' Miles said that it's exciting the state is 'no longer in era of choiceless primaries' and that 'voters actually get to choose.' She also said that the end of the line will impact incumbents as well because they may use it as an opportunity to 'find their independent footing' because there are some that 'do want to be independent from the political machine or their party boss but haven't had the opportunity to do that.' Ben Dworkin, founding director of the Rowan Institute for Public Policy & Citizenship, agreed that the elimination of the line has made it easier to run. 'Every county of New Jersey's 21 counties had their own way of determining who was on the line,' he said. 'Some were more democratic than others, but with its elimination, it just made it easier for people to run.' This is the first primary in which all 21 counties will use the block ballot design as opposed to the county line design. The line traditionally gave candidates endorsed by the county party preferred ballot placement, and an edge in their efforts, but it was dismantled by a federal judge last year. There are 24 competitive districts on the Democratic side of the aisle while Republicans will see contested races in seven. NJ Primary Election 2025: Our complete guide to voting, governor candidates, local races Campaign finance: How are candidates for NJ governor spending in the last days of the primary campaign? Dworkin also said there is the Fulop factor, referring to the slate of candidates that have joined with Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop under his 'Democrats for Change' effort. He said Fulop entered the gubernatorial primary trying to take the progressive lane but after Newark Mayor Ras Baraka jumped in and 'took that lane away,' Fulop pivoted to a more reform focused candidacy, which Dworkin said has helped him in terms of finding support. 'He's trying to capture the lightning in a bottle that Andy Kim caught last year. He's trying to duplicate that,' Dworkin said. 'Part of his strategy has been to try and take advantage of the fact that there is no line, no ballot geography that automatically hampers one candidate in their effort to take on another and because they're all going to be grouped together he's running his own candidates as the Fulop political reform team.' Miles said there's a 'lot of weight in New Jersey politically that's put in a six-word slogan' but that at the end of the day that's not how voters choose candidates and that in cases of a 'slate effect,' voters will choose who is best for their district. Dworkin said it's still the beginning of this new era so it will take time to see how elections post-line will play out, but candidates that are ambitious or inspired by a local issue may be more inclined to jump into the fray. That doesn't mean actual organization and support with a base willing to do campaign legwork like door knocking and cold calls isn't important. The members in District 15, Assemblywoman Verlina Reynolds-Jackson and Assemblyman Anthony Verrelli aren't facing any challenges during the primary and the district hasn't had any Republicans file to run in the fall. There are also four members of the Assembly who are not seeking reelection: Assemblymen Reginald Atkins, John Allen, Julio Marenco and Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter. Katie Sobko covers the New Jersey Statehouse. Email: sobko@ This article originally appeared on NJ primary election Assembly races
Boston Globe
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Israeli forces said they killed a ‘terrorist.' He was 14 years old.
The Israeli military has accused Amer and two of his friends of hurling rocks toward the highway and endangering civilians. It described the boys as 'terrorists,' and said its soldiers had 'eliminated' one and shot the two others. Amer's family and one of the surviving boys deny the accusation, saying they were picking almonds. Amer was shot multiple times in his upper body, according to photographs his family shared with The New York Times. Advertisement Amer's killing has added to accusations that the Israeli military uses excessive force and operates with impunity. It came amid a sharp spike in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, where the Israeli military has been carrying out raids and tightening control in the most sweeping crackdown on militancy there in a generation. Rampages by extremist settlers against Palestinians have also increased recently. Advertisement Amer's death has also raised questions about the US response to helping its own citizens. Senators Andy Kim and Cory Booker of New Jersey have called for a US-led investigation into Amer's death, but the Trump administration has remained largely noncommittal. Last month, the State Department spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, said at a press briefing the Israeli military believed it was stopping an act of terrorism. 'We need to learn more about the nature of what happened on the ground,' she added. American officials did not respond to a request for further information. More than 900 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, mostly by the Israeli military and some by settlers, since the Hamas-led offensive against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the United Nations. Roughly 30 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians in the West Bank during that period. From 2018 to 2022, less than one-third of complaints that soldiers had harmed Palestinians in the West Bank resulted in an investigation, according to a recent report by Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization. Only a fraction have led to legal action. A Hail of Gunfire The three young boys had gone out to pick green almonds, a seasonal delicacy, in a terraced orchard between Turmus Aya and Route 60, a busy north-south artery linking a patchwork of Palestinian towns and Jewish settlements, one of the friends, Ayoub Jabara, 14, told the Times at his home in Turmus Aya. He denied that they had thrown stones, saying that they had merely been throwing dried almonds at each other. Ayoub, who is also a Palestinian American, described reaching a point very close to the main road, and finding a tree with dried-up nuts. 'Amer picked one up and was joking that it was like a stone and threw it at me. I threw it back,' he said. Advertisement Amer was shot at least 11 times, according to his father, Mohammed Rabee. Photographs taken on the cellphone of a family friend who accompanied Rabee when they picked up Amer's body appeared to show several entry wounds, including one in the center of his forehead and others in his neck and upper torso. Hours after the shooting, the Israeli military issued a 10-second clip of blurry footage without a time stamp that shows three unidentifiable figures appearing to gather things from the ground. One of the figures appears to fling something in a downward motion, though no object is visible. The video cuts out as all three appear to turn and run. The military said that its footage was filmed from a military post and that the soldiers were lying in ambush in what they described as a counterterrorism operation in the area. Four days after Amer died, reporters for the Times searched the ridge where he was killed for any signs of the shooting and came across the clothes. Garments that appeared to have been cut off by soldiers and blue surgical gloves were scattered around a bloodstained rock. The military said it was standard procedure to remove clothes to ensure the body was not booby-trapped. The clothes were later identified by the family as Amer's, when the reporters returned them to the family at their home. Even if the boys did throw stones, Mohammed Rabee said, the soldiers could have fired warning shots to scare them away, or could have chased and detained them. 'He was 14 years old,' he said. 'It takes no special training to catch a little kid.' Advertisement Instead, the soldiers fired a barrage of bullets at him. His family believes they wanted to kill him. The military declined to confirm or deny that it has a shoot-to-kill policy for stone throwers. Ayoub, Amer's friend, suffered 'multiple gunshot wounds,' according to medical records from the Istishari Arab hospital in nearby Ramallah, where he spent three days in the intensive care unit. Both Dr. Mohammad Qneibi, a physician at a local clinic where Ayoub was first taken, and Ayoub's father, Ahed Jabara, told the Times that the boy was shot at least three times in the groin area. The family of the third boy, Abdulrahman Shihada, 15, declined to be interviewed.
Time of India
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
'Are you making excuses for their behaviour?': Secy Noem clashes with Sen Kim over ICE Centre visit
New Jersey Senator Andy Kim and Secretary Kristi Noem clashed during a heated exchange at the Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on May 20 over the Democrats' visit to a New Jersey ICE detention centre. Show more Show less
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Senators Ask SEC Not to Abandon New Investigative Database
Monday, four Democratic senators wrote to SEC Chair Paul Atkins, asking him to promise not to further disable the CAT, or shut it down altogether. The SEC's February decision to stop including trader IDs with transactions tracked by the investigative tool 'will significantly impair the agency's ability to understand market events and pursue bad actors, thereby jeopardizing the integrity of our markets,' said the letter from Andy Kim (D., N.J.), Jack Reed (D., R.I.), Elizabeth Warren (D., Ma.), and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md). 'We request assurances from the SEC that it will continue to maintain the CAT in its current form as a critical investigation and enforcement tool designed to prevent illicit market manipulation, including by foreign actors,' the senators wrote.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
New Jersey's ‘county line' is gone. But the fight over its constitutionality continues.
For the first time in decades, the ballot design that helped political bosses cement their power over New Jersey politics won't be used by either party in next month's crowded primary election for governor. But the progressives who shocked the state's political world by ending the so-called county line a year ago now say they're worried some aspects of it could return — and that only a federal court ruling will kill it off forever. Without that, the left-leaning Democrats say, New Jersey's entrenched powers will do everything they can to chip away at truly open primaries. A long-running legal battle over the line's constitutionality continues to play out in federal court, with lawyers for the progressive plaintiffs — who include Democratic Sen. Andy Kim and the New Jersey Working Families Party — calling for a final decision on the matter. But two county clerks and one local party organization — all Democrats — remain opposed. 'The county line system is part of our political past,' Kim said in a statement. 'I want to make sure it's understood to be unconstitutional so it will never come back.' For decades, county party-endorsed primary candidates in most New Jersey counties were placed in the same row or column of the ballot, from president to local council member and even the neighborhood Democratic committee member. Rival candidates running without a slate of allies often found themselves pushed into obscure parts of the ballot known as 'ballot Siberia.' Those ballot placements often virtually determined election outcomes, giving the party leaders enormous sway with their endorsements. That came to an end in the 2024 Democratic Senate primary following Kim's lawsuit, which largely mirrored but quickened a slow-moving 2020 suit by several unsuccessful Democratic candidates. U.S. District Court Judge Zahid Quraishi in March 2024 issued a preliminary injunction barring the line, but only for the Democrats. In response to the decision, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy in March signed a new ballot design law that mandates primary candidates from both parties be grouped by office sought instead of establishment party support and barred county clerks from separating candidates from others running for the same office. But opponents of the line are concerned that future legislation could chip away at the law's anti-line provisions and that local officials will find loopholes in the law that could be avoided with clear court precedent. 'The legislation went a very far way in making sure we don't vet the worst features of the county line,' said Antoinette Miles, executive director of the New Jersey Working Families Party. 'But if we want to make sure we never go back to the same tricks and ballot manipulation we saw with the county line, we need a final court decision.' The absence of the line has played a big role in creating one of the most competitive Democratic gubernatorial primaries in years. Rep. Mikie Sherrill's support from some of the most powerful Democratic organizations in the state, including Essex and Middlesex counties, would normally make her the overwhelming favorite. Instead, Sherrill is the narrow front-runner, with her five rivals — Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, former state Senate President Steve Sweeney and New Jersey Education Association President Sean Spiller — all having at least somewhat realistic paths to the nomination. (The Republican primary for governor is less crowded and, based on limited public polling, less competitive.) The line itself was a big issue in last year's Senate primary leading up to the law abolishing it. Fulop and Baraka came out aggressively against it, while Gottheimer helped hook Middlesex County Democrats up with a prominent attorney who briefly sought to defend it. Months before New Jersey enacted the new law, most of the county clerks who were defendants in the case settled and agreed to get rid of the line. But the Bergen and Union county clerks have refused to settle, while the Camden County Democratic Committee — the dominant party in the county responsible for some of the most egregious examples of ballot design that favored the party-backed candidates — continues to back them in court. The two clerks' attorneys argued in a recent court filing that the plaintiffs keep pressing the case because of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that they're entitled to legal fees from their adversaries only if they win a final ruling. The clerks, who said that the other 17 county clerks who settled had paid approximately $500,000 in legal fees to the plaintiffs' attorneys, don't want to pay. 'Plaintiffs seek to permanently enjoin a law that is no longer on the books because the Union and Bergen County Clerks had the temerity not to agree to use county taxpayer dollars to pay Plaintiffs' counsel's fees for having simply followed State law as it existed at the time," they wrote. The Camden County Democratic Committee argued the case is moot and that the original plaintiffs aren't harmed in part because they no longer had a personal stake in the outcome. The defendants never had a chance to depose the plaintiffs' witnesses who testified in favor of a preliminary injunction, they said, and that Quraishi's initial decision harms them because it applied only to Democrats, not Republicans. But the Camden County Democrats went even further, continuing to argue that grouping candidates together by party endorsement is their constitutional right. 'Imposing limitations on political party organizations who wish to band together, i.e., bracket, while placing no restrictions on individuals acting alone, i.e., unbracketed, is a restraint on a political party organization's freedom of association,' reads their brief. The plaintiffs, who alleged that the county clerks are effectively outsourcing the constitutional arguments in the case to the Camden County Democrats, say there's much more at stake than legal fees. They argued ballot design law did not entirely follow Quraishi's initial decision, including by allowing candidates running for multi-seat offices like state Assembly and county commissioner to 'bracket,' and that some clerks' ballot designs for this primary 'don't conform with the spirit and intent of this Court's prior rulings' or even the new law. They noted that on the Cherry Hill ballot, the Camden County Clerk provided just one oval to vote for an entire slate of 74 Democratic committee candidates instead of allowing voters to pick each candidate, which they said violates the law's 'express mandate that every candidate have an oval or box next to their own name.' (The clerk's office said that listing each candidate with an oval next to their names would make it impossible to fit on a single page of paper.) Yael Bromberg, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said a final judgment is 'necessary to protect current and future voting rights in the state.' 'It's time to put an end to the splurge of taxpayer-funded defense of a 75-year old ballot design which enabled a politics of exclusion and soft corruption, and turn a new page for democracy in New Jersey,' Bromberg said. Attorney Angelo Genova, who represents Union County, declined to comment, while attorney Bill Tambussi, who represents the Camden County Democrats, did not respond to a phone call seeking comment. Even the full return of the county line, while unlikely due to the state law, is not completely out of the question. Republican county parties sat on the sidelines during the battle over the line, but there's been chatter among county GOP chairs about backing an effort to bring back the county line, despite the new state law outlawing it. Morris County Republican Chair Laura Ali, who leads the association of 21 New Jersey GOP chairs, acknowledged to POLITICO that she'd like to bring back the line but wants to wait for the outcome of the primary before discussing it in detail with other party leaders. 'After the election at our next meeting I'm sure we'll all discuss the outcome of the election and the benefits of the ballot in its current format … and we'll go from there,' Ali said.
